


lost in the woods (and i wander on)

by shatteredhourglass



Series: the misadventures of millennial bucky barnes [2]
Category: Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amputee Bucky Barnes, Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky's Still On About The Nipple Piercing, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton Feels, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Deaf Clint Barton, Established Relationship, Feelings, Half-Hearted Suicide Attempt, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Kidnapping, M/M, Modern Bucky Barnes, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Third Person, Red Room (Marvel), Sad, Tony Stark Is Irresponsible, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-10
Updated: 2019-08-10
Packaged: 2020-08-16 04:15:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20192257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shatteredhourglass/pseuds/shatteredhourglass
Summary: “You want to talk about it?”“I really don’t,” Clint says, and his voice doesn't crack but it feels like it should.





	lost in the woods (and i wander on)

He finds Clint up on the roof.

It’s not an unusual thing - if Clint’s not in Bucky’s bed or disappearing off to god-knows-where for work, he’s usually perched somewhere high, and the roof of the apartment building Bucky resides in seems to be his favourite. Bucky approaches him silently, sits down on the edge with him and crosses his legs comfortably. Clint’s got his dangling off the edge, looking down at the street below.

“You okay?”

Clint flinches, like he hasn’t been aware of Bucky’s presence until that moment. Whatever he’s thinking about, it must be some heavy shit, to get that caught up in it. Bucky nudges his side with one elbow gently, and Clint blinks, shakes his head like he’s trying to swat away the shadows in his head.

“Fine,” he answers, gives Bucky a sideways grin. It doesn’t detract from the band-aids slapped up one side of his face, and Bucky _worries,_ stresses right down to his bones but doesn’t say anything. Clint seems oblivious - and if he isn’t, he’s not giving anything away. “What’re you doing up here? Aren’t you supposed to be a good host?”

“It’s not like I _invited_ them,” Bucky grumbles, gets a laugh from Clint. “They just showed up.”

“You’d think a horde of superheroes would have better places to hang out than a broke Millennial’s apartment,” Clint comments.

They sit for a while, letting the cold night air wash over them. Clint’s comfortingly warm where Bucky’s touching him. It’s peaceful.

“Stark keeps naggin’ me about the arm,” Bucky says. “Wants to fiddle with the settings. Then Steve hears and he wants me to make it normal. Like a- a real flesh arm.”

“What do _you_ want?” Clint’s question makes him blink. Then he feels a wash of relief, because of _course_ Clint is the one to ask him that. He’s always let Bucky make his own choices.

He lifts the left arm to the moonlight. It’s half-covered by his hoodie, pushed up to one shiny silver elbow, and Bucky flexes the fingers, watches the play of light over it. It looks _alien_ like this, out of place and whirring quietly at them like it knows things they don’t. Clint watches it too, quiet in a way he normally isn’t. Whatever’s going on must be bothering him a lot.

“Feels wrong, making it look like a real hand when it isn’t,” he confesses, watches Clint’s eyes go all dark and thoughtful. “I lost the real arm, a fancy prosthetic doesn’t change what happened.”

“Remember that which you have lost,” Clint says, distantly like he’s echoing someone else’s words, reaches up to touch the scarring around his ears. He doesn’t touch the hearing aids, just presses his fingertips to a particularly noticeable scar, drags along the length of it. He looks like he’s a million miles away, thinking about something Bucky knows nothing about, and Bucky realizes he _doesn’t_ know a lot about Clint’s background.

There’s obviously something dark there, though, and Bucky’s not going to make him talk about it if he’s not ready. It’s not like Clint has demanded to know what happened to his arm either. There’s things that don’t need to be said yet, if ever.

Clint blinks and the shadows on his face disappear like they’d never been there. He smiles at Bucky, a little lopsided and eternally charming in the way that makes Bucky’s stomach flutter. “How d’you feel about pineapple on pizza?”

“Stay here tonight,” Bucky says.

It’s not really a question, with their legs tangled together like this.

They’re snuggled under the covers, resolutely ignoring the sounds of Steve leaving now he’s kicked everyone else out. Bucky had already said goodnight, it’s fine, he doesn’t care. Clint’s left his hearing aids in for some unknown reason.

“Like I haven’t been invading your bed for the last four months,” Clint retorts, but it’s soft and he burrows a little closer like he’s trying to get inside Bucky’s skin. It’s then that Bucky notices he’s shaking, fine little tremors running through him under Bucky’s hand. It’s - worrying, mostly, and he pulls Clint tighter against him, presses his nose against messy hair and inhales. Clint smells like _Clint,_ like cheap soap and copper, and it’s reassuring, even if Clint’s actions aren’t.

“I like you invading my bed,” Bucky murmurs.

“I bet you do,” Clint answers, pats at Bucky’s chest.

He goes silent for a minute, but the silence feels like he’s thinking about something, so Bucky tries to be patient.

Eventually Clint sighs against his collarbone. “Do you ever get stuck in a situation you can’t see a way out of?”

“Once Steve invited me to a strip club,” Bucky says. “I was worried he’d be homophobic and I didn’t know how to tell him I don’t like girls, so I went, and it was the most fucking nightmarish thing I’d ever seen. No offense to the ladies, I’m sure they were doing their best. I just- ugh.”

Clint snorts, bursts into surprised-sounding laughter. Bucky tries not to smile too hard, rubs his fingers up Clint’s warm skin. “You seem so stoic and _cool_ and then you come out with shit like that,” Clint says. “I’m pretty sure if the city interviewed you Steve would never be able to go out in public again.”

“He wouldn’t, he’d be too embarrassed,” Bucky agrees.

Clint’s not shaking anymore, which Bucky takes as a win, but he still feels subdued. Something’s weighing him down. “You want to talk about it?” Clint shakes his head fiercely, hair rubbing up against Bucky’s skin.

“I really don’t,” Clint says, and his voice doesn't crack but it _feels_ like it should.

“That’s fine too,” Bucky answers. “And hey, whatever the situation is, you’ve got this. Do what you have to.”

“Right,” Clint echoes. “Do what I have to.”

He goes silent again then, and Bucky knows he’s not asleep but it’d be cruel to call him out on it. Clint’s fingers tighten on him slightly, going tense. Bucky’s struck with the realization that he’d do anything for this weird, sad man with his constant bedhair and _nipple piercing_ \- yes, he’s still distracted by that on a daily basis - and that includes letting him internalize his problems until he’s ready, even if it’s scary.

Then there’s a crash and a shatter of glass and Bucky flinches back, looks around, but all he can see is the darkness in front of him. He tries to struggle to his feet when he hears boots and there’s a sharp pain in his neck and then the darkness is invading his skull as well.

The last thing he feels is Clint’s fingers on his chest.

Bucky wakes up with a groan.

It feels like someone’s smacked him with a sledgehammer, and he keeps his eyes closed for a few seconds more, tries to even out his breathing. He’s tied to a chair, rough ropes against his bare ankles and his right arm. The left is gone completely and it’s the first time Bucky’s actively missed the thing, because _this?_ This doesn’t feel like a good situation.

Someone slaps him hard and he sees white.

“He’s awake,” a familiar voice says, but it’s all flat and _wrong,_ and Bucky has to open his eyes then.

Clint’s standing in front of him, but it’s not _Clint._

Clint wouldn’t hit him. Except no one could look _that_ much alike unless cloning is a thing, which it definitely isn’t. (Stark would’ve done it already if it was.) Bucky blinks again to try and clear his vision, and Clint takes a step back, tucking the hand he’d used to hit Bucky behind his back. He’s in an outfit that’s made entirely of black leather, five different weapons in five different holsters attached to him. It’s a far cry from the purple shirts and neon sneakers. He looks dark and deadly like this, something wordlessly _lethal_ even in the way he moves.

A woman steps forward, dressed in business clothes, and Clint steps back against the wall, standing next to- that’s his friend, _Natalie,_ dressed the same as Clint. Shit.

“Mister Barnes, hello,” the businesswoman says. “How are you?”

“What the _fuck_ is this?”

“You have some very interesting friends, Mister Barnes,” she says, ignoring Bucky’s question. “They tend to… interfere in our issues, which isn’t very good for you.”

Fuck. This is about Steve.

But it doesn’t explain what’s going on with Clint.

“Clinton, Natalia, you’re no longer required to keep watch on Captain America. We’ve got our leverage,” the woman says, leaning in with a grin that makes Bucky feel dirty. Bucky just leans to the side, looks past her at the blond leaving the room.

“Clint,” Bucky whispers. “Clint, please.”

There’s no reaction, no emotion, no anything on Clint’s face as he opens the door for the redhead to leave first. It’s completely blank, void of any semblance humanity, and he’s not even _looking_ at Bucky. There’s no similarity to the man that had bought him coffee without asking, laughed with him late at night and argued about the merits of the Predator movies. There’s no cocky, lopsided smirk, no spark of depth in his eyes.

There’s nothing. No evidence of the Clint Barton he’d tripped head-over-heels for, no evidence of anything other than a dead machine.

Bucky’s heart sinks right down into the cold concrete floor.

“He was quite convincing, wasn’t he?”

Bucky tries to twist away from the woman as she leans in again, hot breath in his face. He doesn’t look at her, mind still whirling. He doesn’t _understand._ Keep watch on Captain America? The woman gets a fistful of his hair and _yanks, _pulls Bucky’s attention back to her by force as Bucky blinks back the sting in his eyes.

“Bring him _back,”_ he snarls, spits in her face.

She backhands him in return, hard enough that he sees a flash of white from the sudden onset of pain. While he’s still catching his breath she wipes off her face with a black handkerchief and then grabs his hair again, twists hard enough that his eyes water.

“There’s nothing to bring back,” she says, low and vicious. Bucky tastes metal. “There never was, Mister Barnes. He’s always been ours.”

“Bullshit,” Bucky says, but it’s barely audible. There’s no way it could all be- it couldn’t all be a lie.

“We raised him, James. Trained him for this. The Red Room program has some of the finest infiltrators in the world. Little Clinton is particularly good at seduction, isn’t he? We don’t have many boys, but he’s very valuable. Gets our targets wrapped right around his finger, and they’re too far gone to care when he slits their throat.”

“You’re lying,” Bucky rasps.

She yanks his hair again. “Would you like to see some evidence? I can, you know. Just to break you a little more. Terribly indulgent of me, really, but a little fun is necessary every now and then, isn’t it?”

“Fuck you,” he spits, gets hit again. There’s blood leaking from his split lip, making a trail that he can’t wipe off. The woman doesn’t care, just smiles at him with far too many teeth and stands up.

She makes him watch it.

Bucky sees a young Clint - couldn’t be anymore than ten or eleven, all wide blue eyes and innocence - fighting girls the same age, fighting older men and snapping their necks without the slightest hesitation, a barely-there smile appearing when someone off-camera tells him he’s doing well, that he's a good boy. There’s no acknowledgement of the corpses underneath him.

The video displays the children being handcuffed to their bed at night, some submitting to it without a word and others kicking and screaming. Those ones disappear, usually through a swift-handed execution with an older girl with white-blonde hair, or Clint himself.

There’s shooting practice, Clint and a much smaller Nat lining up their too-big rifles at targets in the distance. It takes a few minutes before Bucky realizes that they’re shooting at real people, when one cries out because Nat clips him in the leg instead of killing him directly. The sound cuts off after a second, Clint shooting the man in the head and then returning to target practice. Neither of them look disturbed by the scene.

He sees a slightly older Clint, too-long limbs and scruffy hair, squaring off against an older boy with auburn hair and the same facial features.

“His older brother, Charles Bernard Barton,” the woman whispers into his ear. Bucky tries to squirm away, looks away from the screen and has his face forcibly turned back. “This is when we knew he was ready to graduate the program.”

Bucky watches Clint knock the boy - his brother - down onto the ground with lethal grace, hears someone say _don’t hesitate, Clinton_ and Clint strikes, hits the boy directly in the throat with enough force that Bucky flinches involuntarily. Immediately the boy is choking, clawing at his throat and reaching for Clint with his other hand, eyes begging for help even as he gets weaker. Bucky looks at Clint on-screen instead and he’s dead-eyed, completely blank without even a sliver of empathy on his face.

When the boy stops moving, he turns to whoever’s behind the camera, tucks his hands behind his back and waits, ceaselessly obedient.

_“Very good,”_ a voice says, and Clint looks pale, doesn’t smile but he nods acknowledgement. There’s no sign that he even cares about the slowly-cooling corpse a few inches away from him.

“See? He’s ours,” the woman says. “Would you like to see evidence of the men he’s seduced?”

“No,” Bucky croaks, but she turns it on anyway, shocks him when he tries to close his eyes. He doesn’t want to watch, he _can’t_ watch, can’t see that footage of Clint line up with his memories.

She forces him anyway, and he sees that soft smile in HD, catches the little sultry smirk as Clint offers a grey-haired man a drink, slides into the lap of another. He vomits at one point, can’t hold back the horror surging through him as he watches Clint make his way through a series of men and women alike, always charming and soft and a little teasing right up until he drives a knife through their throat, or pulls out a silenced gun and shoots them without a word.

It always ends in death and that empty look returning, Clint waiting for orders like a well-trained dog, and Bucky’s. Bucky’s chest hurts. His _everything_ hurts, but it’s nothing compared to this. He’s struggling to believe it, even with the evidence there - it felt so _genuine,_ Clint’s fingers linking with his, the way he’d stumble in the mornings all rumpled and sleep-warm as Bucky passed him the first coffee of the day, the way he’d look at Bucky when they were in bed together, like he was a little awed it was even happening.

And it’s all bullshit.

Everything their relationship was is just _training,_ just some villain’s attempt to capture Captain America. Even the Red Room don’t care about him, not really, which means Clint certainly doesn’t.

Bucky’s crying by the end, tears slipping hot down his face without permission, and the woman laughs and leaves.

He wishes they’d just killed him instead.

Bucky’s not sure how long he stays there, tied to that chair in the dark.

It’s long enough for his bad shoulder to go from mildly aching to silent agony, and with nothing to think about except for Clint’s betrayal, he’s feeling a little frayed at the edges. Does a betrayal even _count_ as a betrayal if it was a lie from the very start? He feels the chill tug at his bones, wonders if they’d give him a jacket. It doesn’t really matter if he’s comfortable to them, probably, as long as he doesn’t die.

Even if he does die, Steve won’t know that. They could still use him as a bargaining chip regardless. God, Steve’s going to be so disappointed.

Bucky’s so _stupid._ He can’t believe he fell for it. Of course Clint wasn’t actually in love with him. Why would he be? Bucky’s… he’s cranky and socially inept and he hates crowds. He complains all the time and he won’t let a barber near him with scissors because he has panic attacks and he’s a fucking mess at the best of times. He’s not perfect, not even close.

The problem is, Clint made him feel like he _was._

A rattle at the door makes him raise his head.

He’s expecting the woman to come back and taunt him, maybe twist the metaphorical knife in his chest a little harder. Bucky’s not sure he can handle it, not really, and so he goes back to looking down at his own thighs, tries not to think about the time Clint pressed a kiss to the side of his knee and whispered about how pretty he was, how good.

Then someone is kneeling at his feet, and for a minute his breath catches in his throat and then he recognizes the scarlet hair falling in soft curls, pale hands fiddling with the ropes around his ankles.

“Natalie?”

“No. Not Natalie, or Natalia. Natasha,” she says, looking up at him cautiously. “James.”

“Bucky,” he says, more of a croak, but she smiles briefly at the exchange. She’s still dressed in the black uniform everyone in this place is wearing, and yet there’s something in her facial expression that says she’s not here to cause pain. Then again, it could just be another trick. Bucky wouldn’t be surprised if it was.

She gets to her feet and walks around him to untie his hand, careful and quick. The ropes fall to the ground silently and Bucky doesn’t move an inch. Natasha circles around to his front again, tips his chin up to inspect his split lip. She lets him go after a second and he still doesn’t move.

“I’m sorry,” she says. Doesn’t specify, but Bucky knows she means Clint. When he makes eye contact, she looks sad, and a little resigned. It’s enough raw humanity that he decides to go along with whatever she has planned, torture or otherwise. She holds out a hand and he takes it, lets her pull him up on shaky legs.

“Where to?”

“Are you well enough to run?”

There’s a shout from somewhere in the distance and Natasha’s eyes go wide with alarm. She shoves him out of the room and to the right, and he turns back to her, uncertain. She’s drawing a handgun from its holster, aiming in the other direction as there’s a worrying crash.

“Keep running that way,” she calls over her shoulder. “Take the first tunnel to the left, then go left at the second door, then up the stairs towards the door with the red star on it. I called the Avengers, they’re on their way.”

“I can’t just-” he starts, and she glares at him, fierce and unimpressed.

“I can’t fight them if I’m worrying about you, Bucky,” she says. “I’ll be fine. Get out of here.”

He runs.

There’s a million different corridors, some with people screaming or crying behind them, but Bucky doesn’t have keys or even an extra arm to break the locks. He has to leave it behind, breathe deep until he’s just following Natasha’s directions and blocking out the bloodied hands reaching at him through the bars. It still shakes him, makes him feel scared right down to his core, but he manages to keep going, takes the stairs two at a time.

He doesn’t trip, miraculously, and then there’s the door with the red star, right across a thin-looking bridge protecting him from the rushing water below. Bucky stops dead, stares down at the black water. He can’t fall now.

There’s a bang and shouting, and then Bucky’s skidding across the bridge haphazardly, footsteps echoing down the hallway. He gets to the end, sees a lever. It’s connected to the bridge and Bucky scans over it, sees the line where it folds in on itself. Why the lever’s only on this side, he doesn’t know, but it buys him some time. He reaches out for it, gets his fingers around the rusted metal and then he makes the mistake of looking towards the tunnel he came from.

Clint’s standing there, all black uniform and cold blue eyes.

_“Clint,”_ he says, didn’t realize he could put that much feeling into one word.

Clint raises his fingers to his ear, touches an earpiece that’s nearly invisible. It’s _nothing_ like his purple hearing aids, so against everything they’d talked about that Bucky feels cold again, even before Clint starts talking in that flat, emotionless voice. “Found the escapee, ma’am. Bringing him in.”

“Please don’t do this,” Bucky says but Clint’s expression doesn’t change, so he yanks down the lever.

The bridge swings down with an ear-splitting screech that makes Clint flinch back a step. It’s enough of a pause that the gap is too large to get across when he recovers, and Bucky’s relieved and horrified in equal measures, can’t quite make himself stop staring at Clint.

“This can’t be all that you are,” Bucky calls out, a little desperate. “Clint, come on. I don’t know if that’s even your real name, but it doesn’t matter. You remember what you said, on the roof? Do you _want_ to do this? Because I don’t think you do. That wasn’t some Russian spy trying to get to Captain America through me, that was a _human being_ who _felt_ things__.__”

Clint’s fingers go back to his earpiece unerringly. “Permission to use lethal force?”

He must get a reply in the affirmative, because he reaches for a holster on his thigh.

Bucky runs the few steps to the door with the red star, smacks against it uselessly. His chest is still aching, all cracked like he’s going to bleed out on the floor right here. It’s locked, or jammed or _something_, and it won’t open no matter how hard he pushes against it and there’s no _time._ He turns around in a panic, turns his stare onto Clint as the slim handgun is pointed directly at him.

This is it. He’s got nothing - no weapons, no armour, no magic powers or charm to persuade. All he’s got is the truth, bubbling up his throat uncontrollably as he sees Clint’s gloved fingers tighten on the gun.

“I love you,” he says in a rush.

Clint smiles, but there’s nothing in his eyes. “That’s unfortunate.”

Bucky squeezes his eyes shut tight and there’s a _bang,_ one that rattles him right down to his bones.

But it doesn’t _hurt,_ and he cracks open one eye to see Clint still aiming the gun, face carefully blank.

Steve yanks him back from the edge and into the relative safety of the previously-locked doorway. He must’ve broken it from the other side, and Bucky grabs at him with numb fingers, tries to pull back when Steve starts dragging him outside. Steve’s got blood matting the side of his hair and there’s a nasty bruise, but Bucky can’t focus when his scrambled brain keeps screaming for _Clint._

They reach a bend in the pipe and then a hole up to the surface, and Bucky can see the blue light of Iron Man’s arc reactor up above. Steve holds out his hands to give Bucky a boost up and all Bucky can do is shake his head, panicked. His hair falls over his face and he can’t see through it, can’t see through the haze of panic.

“Buck, we gotta go,” Steve says. “They’ll be following us.”

“But- Clint, he’s _not-_ he didn’t shoot me,” Bucky answers urgently.

“He just missed,” Steve says. “I’m sorry, you know I am, but he missed you by a few inches, that’s all it was.”

“Clint doesn’t _miss,”_ he snaps, looks back at the darkness. Clint’s out there somewhere, and Bucky’s about ninety-nine percent sure the Red Room won’t take kindly to him fucking up. They’re the one who made him a killer, they _know _what he does, how scarily efficient he is with a ranged weapon. He looks back at Steve, and the desperation must be written all over his face because Steve’s expression softens.

“We’ll come back for him, Bucky,” he says. “Right now, we gotta go. There’s nothing you can do for him right now.”

Steve’s right, because Bucky’s not an Avenger. He’s not a hero, not a superhuman, this isn’t his world. He’s just a hipster from Brooklyn with an attitude. He doesn’t even have two flesh arms. He’s regrettably, _painfully_ human compared to these people, can feel the bruises blooming out on his skin already, and he can’t even save the guy he loves from the bad guys because he’ll die, without question.

“Cap, we’re running out of time,” Tony announces.

Bucky goes because he has no options, and resolutely doesn’t think about how his boyfriend may or may not be dead already.

“They were sent to infiltrate the Avengers,” Tony says. “Or at least, Romanov was. Barton was on surveillance, wasn’t supposed to make contact. They were probably worried we’d recognize him for those assassinations in Texas we checked out- you remember those, Thor?”

“Indeed,” Thor agrees. “The archer. I remember it well. Such excellent shooting. So they are enemies?”

“Not exactly,” Tony says, waves his hand. “Romanov came to me last night, told me everything. They want to switch sides. Or _she_ does, and she was going to try and convince Barton to join her. The brainwashing the Red Room does is pretty extensive.”

“Did she know they were going to kidnap me?”

Steve’s hand squeezes Bucky’s shoulder and he shakes it off, works on lining up the metal arm properly so he can click it into place. He really doesn’t want to be touched right now, not by anyone in this room. It starts up with a whir and he twists the wrist carefully, makes sure it’s working before he turns back to Tony, who’s rubbing at his beard thoughtfully.

“Don’t think so,” Tony says. “She was going to blow up the base tonight, kill everyone inside. They must’ve changed plans on her and she decided to get you out of there first.”

_“First?”_

“She’s still taking it out,” Tony adds. “Good riddance, if you ask me. Russian brainwashing schools are bad news.”

“We should be helping her,” Steve says. “She’s our friend.”

“Technically,” Tony replies, pointing a finger at Steve, “_technically_ she was bullshitting us the whole time. We don’t know anything about her, not really. Should we be helping someone like that? Trusting them?”

“She trusted you enough to tell you about it,” Bruce reasons from the corner.

Steve moves away from Bucky then, and Bucky hears the familiar clank of metal, turns his head slightly to see the shield out of the corner of his eye. Steve’s grabbing his stealth suit off of a rack too, throwing it over his shoulder. “It’s the right thing to do,” he says. “I’m going, whether you want to or not.”

Thor grabs for his hammer. “I shall join you too.”

“I’ll sit this one out,” Banner says. “The Other Guy causes more problems than good.”

Tony sighs and buries his face in his hands. “Fuck, I hate being on a team with you all. Why can’t you be sensible for once in your lives? Fine, go change, we move out in ten.”

Bucky sits there, and he thinks about Clint alone in that base, maybe with Natasha, maybe not. He’s openly betrayed the people who raised him, people who had him kill for _sport,_ and regardless of the fucked-up things that have happened to Clint, Bucky can’t just sit here and wait for something to happen. He thinks about how he’s so much _younger_ than the Avengers, far from a superhero or even a good person, half the time.

He thinks about how he can’t leave Clint out there to die. “I’m going too.”

“Bucky, you’re not,” Steve protests, but Bucky glares at him and whatever Steve sees on his face makes the protests die immediately.

“I might have something in your size,” Tony says, for once being the pacifist. “You mind navy? Of course you don’t, you dress like an emo hipster, it’ll suit you. Accent those baby blues. Come on, let’s get going before Romanov gets killed and we look like idiots.”

Once they’re away from everyone else Tony gives him an assessing look.

Bucky zips up the dark blue jacket, pats it smooth. It fits perfectly, weirdly enough, and he gives Tony a suspicious look. Tony’s still rubbing his beard.

“You sure about this?”

“I’m sure,” Bucky answers, makes sure his voice doesn’t welcome any arguments. Tony just shrugs, takes him at face-value the same way he had when he’d shown up the first time at Steve’s insistence to get the prosthetic. He presses a button and a shocking array of weapons appear, from a staff with a wickedly curved end to a range of rifles that Bucky remembers vaguely from a game he’d played.

Tony taps his fingers along a hammer, looks back at Bucky thoughtfully. “What experience have you got, weapon-wise? Ever used a gun?”

“I was a boxer,” Bucky says, chews at his lip. “Used a bow, once, with-”

He breaks off and Tony looks painfully sympathetic, starts fiddling with the ring on his finger subconsciously. Bucky watches him do it, wonders who the ring is for, whether it’s the eerily efficient woman upstairs with the exasperated smile or Colonel Rhodes and his dry humour. Could be Steve, even, or Doctor Banner with his shy sideways looks and cups of tea. Bucky doesn’t pretend he understands Tony Stark.

“Anyway,” he says. “I don’t want Iron Man armour.”

“Wasn’t going to give you any, buddy,” Tony says with amusement, hands him a knife.

It’s not a big knife, not by any means, and Bucky looks down at it with growing concern before he fixes Tony with a stare. Tony doesn’t look put off by his expression, just hands him another knife. This one glows a little in the light and Bucky gives it a suspicious stare, picks it up with his left hand instead of his right just in case. Looks back at Tony.

“Is- is that _it?”_

Tony laughs. “What’ve you been doing with that arm, Buckaroo? You never tried to hit anything with it?”

“You think I go around punching shit with a _billion-dollar_ prosthetic?”

“I forget everyone isn’t rich sometimes. Even if it dented, I’d just make it stronger,” Tony says absently, gestures at a stone pillar in the middle of the room. “Try that on for size, before we go.”

He gets up to put on the Iron Man armour then, and Bucky’s left with a mountain of questions he’s not sure he wants the answers to. Still, the curiosity wins out and he approaches the block of stone, feels it out with his right hand. It _feels _real, and why would Tony fuck with him right now anyway? He tucks the knife into a thigh holster and falls into a comfortable stance, pulls back his left hand and _punches._

His fist goes straight through the concrete.

Oh.

The place is already smoking when they get there.

There’s a handful of women in the same outfit that Natasha had been wearing, looking a little frazzled as they stand there. One is yelling angrily in Russian, and when Tony tries to approach her she shoots at his armour angrily, spits out a handful of curses. The rest spot them standing there and advance, some mixture of fear and rage in their eyes as they pull out knives and guns.

“Don’t kill them,” Steve orders and Thor nods acknowledgement before he jumps into the fray.

Tony’s still trying to fight off the first woman. Steve turns back to Bucky. “You’re sure about this?”

“As sure as I’ll ever be,” Bucky answers, flinches back when Steve blocks a throwing knife with his shield.

He’s at the wrong angle to block the white-haired woman with a Glock in her hands, though, and Bucky throws his left hand up, hears the sound of the bullet bouncing off and lets out a sigh of relief. He’s starting to change his mind about Tony. Steve starts moving towards the entrance to the base, then, going around the worst of the battle. Bucky just tries not to die.

“Are we _sure_ they’re in there,” he shouts at Steve.

“We’re hoping,” Steve calls back, no reassurance whatsoever, and Bucky sighs.

They reach the entrance and stop, look back. The sounds of the battle are muffled in the small alcove, and Bucky’s about to ask Steve if they should go down when the place looks like it's the scene of a mass homicide.

Natasha stumbles out of the door, smear of blood blending in with her hair as she walks straight into Steve’s chest and nearly bounces off. Steve catches her, holds her up as she slumps. Her eyes are dazed when she opens them again, and Bucky glances from her to the doorway and then back again.

There’s a lot of black smoke billowing out of the shadows now, too much for a place that’s going to survive.

“You’re okay?”

“I’m okay. Got the bombs all set,” Natasha says, then her gaze lands on Bucky, standing alone with his arms wrapped around himself. Her eyes go wide then, panicked like she’s seeing something horrific. Like she’s expecting something else, like maybe a blond man with a lopsided smile and his heart on his sleeve. Bucky’s heart freezes in his chest.

“Where is he?”

“He said- he said he was going to go and make things right, make up for what he did,” Natasha answers rapidly, has to stop and cough. “I thought he meant he was coming to see _you.”_

Bucky looks back at the doorway, then back at Natasha. Her expression is pained, understanding and bone-deep grief all over her face. It’s then that Bucky realizes too, that Clint’s tricked her so he can _make things right,_ and even if he doesn’t know Clint’s whole story he knows that Clint is a dramatic goddamn son-of-a-bitch. He’s going to stay here when the place explodes.

“How long before it blows?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha says. “Not long. You shouldn’t. He wouldn’t want you to.”

“He doesn’t get a fucking choice in the matter,” Bucky retorts. “I ain’t- I’m not leaving him down there to _die,_ I can’t, I won’t.”

“You’re just as stubborn as he is,” she says, and it sounds like a compliment and an insult all at once. “Please go get our boy, Bucky Barnes.”

“Are you sure there’s time?”

“I’ll make time,” Bucky says, ignores Steve’s protesting noise. “Steve, I couldn’t give up on him when he was aiming his gun at my face, I can’t leave him down there now I know there’s the slightest chance he _meant_ some of it.”

Steve still looks worried, but Bucky just looks at Natasha. “There any more agents down there?”

“No,” she says. “We killed them all. It’s just Clint.”

“Good,” he says, pulls his jacket up over his nose and mouth before he steps into the haze of smoke and concrete.

It’s a sea of corpses.

None of them are wearing the black leather outfits - they’re all in the businesswear that the woman that had held Bucky hostage had worn, pencil skirts and neatly pressed white shirts, all stained with blood now. The ringleaders, probably. Good riddance, Bucky thinks viciously, steps on one corpse’s face with his boot on his way down the stairs.

It’s a different layout than the place he’d been in before, more extensive, and Bucky goes down one flight of stairs, then two, then three. There’s bodies strewn all along the way, some with arrows sticking out of their throats, and Bucky thinks about the time they went to the archery range and Clint stood behind him, gently adjusted Bucky’s stance as he aimed for a target. _You look hot with a bow, _Clint had said, grinning at him as he’d aimed his own arrow.

He’d hit a bullseye without even looking, and Bucky’s heart wrenches in his chest.

The next floor seems to be the last one and Bucky tries to shoulder open the door, realizes it’s locked. Shit. “Clint?”

There’s no answer and then Bucky remembers the arm, balls his hand into a fist and hits the metal. It breaks off the hinges, slams onto the ground with a massive thump and Bucky feels momentarily embarrassed before he remembers that was the plan, shoves his way in.

It’s a control room of some kind, full of blinking lights and the smell of oil. There’s less smoke down here and Bucky pulls down his jacket, glances around. At first he doesn’t see Clint, just thinks there’s another corpse propped up against the control panel, and then he registers the bow beside it, the unruly mess of blond hair.

“Clint,” he breathes, gets down on his knees between the sprawl of Clint’s legs, touches metal fingers to the blood on his cheek.

Clint’s eyes blink open, hazy and impossibly blue. He looks like the Clint that Bucky fell in love with, and Bucky’s heart feels like it falls straight out of his chest with relief. “Bucky?”

“Get up, we’re getting out of here,” he says, knows it’s demanding and doesn’t care.

Clint’s smile is fucking heartbreaking. “They showed you what I did. I’m not- I can’t _fix_ it. I can’t fix any of it, and I can’t go back and stop it, and I can’t do _anything_. It was this or die and I _chose_ to be the monster, I chose this and I deserve to pay for it.”

“You were a _kid,_ Clint,” Bucky says. “What about Natasha? Does she deserve to pay?”

“No,” Clint answers. “She- she’s good, she’s been trying really hard to find a way to get out. To survive. But I’m…”

“_You_ were surviving,” Bucky says.

“I’m just the Red Room’s puppet, Bucky. One of their pet assassins.”

“If you were just their puppet you would’ve _shot_ me. You wouldn’t have slept at my place every second night, wouldn’t have talked to me at all, if Stark was right and you were supposed to be just watching Steve,” he says, sees Clint look shifty because he _knows_ Bucky is right. Bucky tries another angle, taps his fingers against the left side of Clint’s chest. “And before that, you were resisting them- or is this a Russian spy-sanctioned nipple piercing?”

Clint chokes out a wet laugh at that, buries his face in his hands.

“What do you _want,_ Clint,” Bucky asks, the same thing Clint had asked him.

“A dog,” Clint says, and his voice is muffled by his hands. Bucky’s thinks he’s probably heard that wrong, then Clint keeps talking. “I want a dog and my fucking purple hearing aids back, I want tattoos, I want an outfit that isn’t a goth leatherdaddy’s dream, I want to wake up in your bed and not have to worry about _leaving_ in the middle of the night because I’ve been ordered to kill someone who doesn’t deserve it.”

“You can have all of that,” Bucky says a little desperately, feels his own eyes sting in sympathy. How much did this place _take_ from him? “If I take you to the fucking pet shelter will you come home with me?”

Clint’s bark of laughter sounds more like a sob this time.

“We’ll figure it out,” Bucky adds decisively, gets ahold of Clint with his metal hand, pulls him to his feet with more force than is strictly necessary. Clint goes, gets to his feet and even though he’s crying a little bit, he lets Bucky guide him up the stairs. Bucky pulls a handkerchief out of his pocket and Clint makes a noise that’s nearly hysterical when he sees it’s purple.

“You’re kind of bossy,” he says, voice wobbling a little. “Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“I love you too,” Clint admits, and Bucky wants to curl around him like an affectionate snake, wants to press him up against a wall and kiss off every tear on his face, wants to tie Clint down on his bed and never let him leave again. “’m sorry I was too busy pretending to shoot you the first time, I had to get them to trust me enough to breach the main headquarters.”

“It’s okay,” Bucky says instead, because they don’t have time to be sappy here. “I get it, just- can you walk a little faster?”

Natasha slaps Clint when they get outside.

Bucky’s too stunned to react as the _crack_ sounds loud enough to make all the Avengers turn and stare as well. Her eyes are wet too and she grabs him a second later, pulls him into a hug that looks more like a chokehold. Bucky hears her hiss _don’t ever do that to me again _in Clint’s ear, and Clint hugs her back, presses his nose into her hair and closes his eyes.

It feels too intimate to be watching, and Bucky turns to see Steve watching him. “What?”

“You really like him, huh,” Steve says.

“I really do,” Bucky agrees, a little helplessly.

“It’s cute,” Steve adds, and Bucky punches him in the shoulder. Just with his right arm, though. Using the left feels mean, even with a hundred year old supersoldier. Steve laughs and they start walking towards the Quinjet that’s parked a few meters away. Clint and Natasha catch up a minute later, and Bucky feels a leather-clad hand in his steel one, looks down to see Clint’s fingers threaded with his.

“Guess I’m unemployed now,” Clint says. “You mind being a sugar daddy for a while?”

“I’m younger than you,” Bucky argues, gets a fond look for it.

“Actually,” Tony interrupts, and Bucky glares at him. He holds his red and gold hands up in a non-threatening gesture. “Calm down, Barnes, I’m not stealing your man. Or I am, but with his consent.”

“Can you talk _properly_ for once in your life,” Steve says, exasperated. “Just talk plain English.”

They stop at the Jet and Steve circles around so he’s standing next to Tony, facing Clint and Natasha, pulls his helmet off of his head and scratches a hand through his hair. Tony sighs and rolls his eyes, but Steve ignores him with the kind of ease that must take years to perfect. Bucky’s kind of jealous.

“We were wondering if you’d want to join us. Officially,” Steve says.

_“Not_ as a Stark Industries intern,” Tony comments, looking in Natasha’s direction. “As people who save lives. You’re both absurdly skilled and kind of badass, and while neither of you are as pretty or clever as I am, we could use some of that skill on the Avengers.”

“I’ll do my best,” Natasha says, completely unfazed. She reaches out to shake hands with Steve and Bucky thinks that maybe this was her plan all along. Clint looks a little more hesitant, and the hand holding Bucky’s tightens marginally.

“I killed people,” he says.

“We all have,” Tony replies. “Except maybe Thor, but he’s the embodiment of perfection. Question is, are you going to try and make up for it, or are you going to sit here and feel bad about it?”

“I’m not-” Clint starts, stops. Sighs. “Can I pick my own weapon?”

“Sure,” Tony says breezily. “You want a fancy gun?”

“I want a bow,” Clint says, tripping over the _I want_ part of the sentence. “If you’re sure.”

“Your boy tells us you don’t miss,” Tony answers with a shrug. Bucky scowls at him. “We could use a sharpshooter, even if you want a stick with a string attached instead of Stark Industries’ finest. Are you sure you don’t want a gun, we could get one with a repulsor that’s solar-powered or even-”

“Does he start right away?”

Tony turns to Bucky. “No. Why?”

Bucky shrugs one shoulder, keeps ahold of Clint’s hand. “Can you drop us off at the closest dog shelter? We've got a date with a dog before you make him a superhero.”

Clint laughs then, and it’s the most beautiful thing Bucky’s ever heard in his life.

**Author's Note:**

> winterhawk bingo square: millennial!bucky/red room!clint
> 
> *smacks own ass* this baby can hold so much angst  
y'all can technically blame the winterhawk bingo mods for this because they enabled me thank you and goodnight


End file.
